Thanks to West, NBA suddenly in its salad days

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, April 13, 2008

David Stern has all kinds of data showing NBA attendance is up, TV ratings are up and merchandise sales are up.

Good news, obviously, but not the evidence he'd cite first when calling this a good year.

For that, the commissioner turns to a much different set of numbers: the Western Conference standings.

That's where he finds the deepest playoff race his league has ever seen, the catalyst for a remarkable turnaround. The NBA is a week away from closing a memorable regular season, bouncing back from perhaps the worst offseason it's ever endured.

And it's happened in the best way possible to Stern, with strong play and better story lines on the court that are just too good to be ignored.

"The basketball part is what has legs because the world is watching and they're really having a good time watching," Stern said.

Are they ever.

Throw in a too-close-to-call MVP race, the record-shattering re-emergence in Boston of the league's winningest franchise, and a flurry of blockbuster trades, and there's been no shortage of things to talk about for fans.

"The races, the Western Conference, you've got Boston back being one of the best teams, one of the storied franchises that has now come back to prominence. The Lakers are back up there again with the moves they've made. I think it's been a good year all the way around," Minnesota coach Randy Wittman said. "The more competition you have, like this year has been, the more interesting it is."

Only 2 1/2 games separated the top six teams through Thursday in the West, where somebody will have the best record ever for a non-playoff team and there's seemingly an important matchup every night.

No wonder viewership is up 12 percent or more on ABC, ESPN and TNT. Ratings have increased 8 percent on the two cable networks, with a 15 percent gain on ABC.

"Across what you're looking at, together with the improved ratings and the emergence of basketball as a primary story, from the Celtics to the Pistons to Kobe to everything going on in the West, it's come together in a very good way," Stern said.

TNT had the most anticipated game of the season, when the Celtics snapped Houston's 22-game winning streak last month, and drew its highest rating for a regular-season game since the 2006-07 opener.

"I'm happy that everyone's interested. Why, because of the competition in the West," TNT studio analyst Kenny Smith said. "Every team is viable, every team from 6-7-8 could not make the playoffs. Every team in the first round could get knocked out from 1 to 8. That's why people are interested."

The NBA is coming off a surprisingly strong March, when it usually cedes the basketball spotlight to the NCAA tournament following its All-Star weekend and trade deadline. This year, thanks to the Rockets' winning streak, a successful All-Star run in New Orleans, and the big trades that sent Shaquille O'Neal, Pau Gasol and Jason Kidd to West powers, interest only grew.

The league drew more than 4.2 million fans, its highest attendance ever in March, and sales at the NBA Store in New York were up 46 percent from the same period last year, part of the overall 17 percent increase for the store and NBAstore.com for the season.

"This is the best time of the year for the NBA in terms of having eight to nine teams - you're going to have a team that's probably 15 games over .500 not make the playoffs, so that shows you that the league is strong in that area. And then you have the re-emergence of the Boston Celtics, a storied franchise," Smith said. "So this is a great time in that sense."

One few could have seen coming last summer.

The NBA was thrown into a scandal by former referee Tim Donaghy, who admitted betting on games he officiated. Coming just weeks after an ugly championship series, when San Antonio swept Cleveland in the lowest-rated finals ever, things rarely looked worse for the league.

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